


give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth

by Granspn



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Multi, basically hawkeye is a hopeless romantic at heart but he has serious abandonment issues, harry from when harry met sally voice: goodbye is a very big thing for you, i always want to write something funny but then it ends up kind of sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:09:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn
Summary: a little thing about hawkeye and the various people he’s been in love with over the years“Hawkeye doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t hold fidelity as a principle per se, but he does know that it’s highly upsetting to the cheatee to be cheated on, and for this reason he abstains. It’s not as if he doesn’t sleep around; he just doesn’t sleep around if he’s seeing someone. If he’s seeing someone, he’s really seeing someone. He falls in love hard, and he falls in love fast, and he can usually tell after his first conversation with someone whether it’s going to be serious or not. He hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Relationships: "Trapper" John McIntyre/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce/Carlye Walton, also references to various hawkeye hookups, and bj and trapper's marriages
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56





	give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth

**Author's Note:**

> because I refuse to accept that hawk (and carlye) actually lived in Boston since that’s too many goddamn people from Boston and why would he not know where Roxbury is when he’s pretending to be Ted Williams on the phone (!!!), I’ve put them in a town a little while away, a little closer to Worcester but close enough to Boston that he would conceivably tell people he lived in Boston to save having to explain where it is yet far enough away that they would never actually go into the city except to see bad musicals a la "hawkeye." Even though the MOST PLAUSIBLE explanation for all this and Hawkeye’s many other behaviors is that they actually lived in New York (brooklyn maybe, or downtown)………. I will concede the point and have put them in Massachusetts. Under protest. Anyway!
> 
> Also if they said a war for all seasons takes place in 1951 no it doesn’t :) sorry baseball fans

_What Carlye Got: the records, Sheldon and Mary, the radio, the carpet, the good lamp, the Portland flannel, married_

_What Hawkeye Got: the books, Jack and Olive, Arrow the cat, the apartment, the photos from Coney Island, the lavender sweater, drafted_

i. March, 1948

When Carlye is thinking of leaving Hawkeye, she tells Olive, who looks uncomfortable. So maybe that was a mistake. Hawk was always closer with Olive and Jack than she was. So she implores her not to tell him what she’d said and tells Mary instead.

“But why?” Mary says as she sneaks a shot of whiskey into her decaf coffee. “You two seem so happy! You’re practically inseparable.” Mary works the front desk in Emergency.

“That’s as may be,” Carlye says, “but he still hasn’t asked me to marry him. He hasn’t even hinted that he’s thinking about it.” Hawkeye always says that all married people do is complain about being married. He’s right, of course, but that only makes it more annoying.

“Well, of course he hasn’t, it’s Hawkeye! He’s so… he’s Hawkeye. Of course he doesn’t want to get married. That doesn’t mean he isn’t utterly devoted to you. Carl, he looks at you like you just plucked the moon out of the sky and handed it to him on a plate.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Besides, I thought that’s why you liked him. He’s so…” she keeps fishing for a descriptor. “Untraditional.” 

“I thought that’s why I liked him, too.” She sighs. She still loves him. She’ll probably always love him. (He’s impossible not to love.) “I never thought I cared about tradition. I think that’s not what it’s about, though. I guess I just need a guarantee that this isn’t just gonna end one day, you know? Of course you know, you’re married.”

“But Sheldon and Hawkeye are so–”

“I know, I know.” Sheldon is an orthopedic surgeon. He doesn’t even work weekends, except once a month when he comes to the clinic to set dislocated shoulders and give lollipops to kids with sprained wrists. Hawkeye goes to the clinic every Tuesday and Thursday after his shift and stays until everyone’s been seen or until the night nurses force him to leave.

“Hawkeye would never leave you,” Mary says, and she’s right. “That boy really loves you. And when he loves something, he means it.”

“But that’s it!” Carlye says. “Yes, he loves me, yes, he means it. But you know what he loves just as much, probably even more? The job! The goddamn hospital! All those people in there are just as important to him as I am, and maybe it makes me selfish but I don’t want to be in a relationship with the guy who sees me as just another person.” And maybe Hawkeye seeing her as just another person isn’t the same as just another person seeing her as just another person because to Hawkeye a person isn’t just a person; personhood elevates you to the position of humanity and he’ll treat you with the utmost respect and kindness until you give him a reason not to. But either way she can’t do it anymore.

She can practically hear his stomach drop when she tells him. She hears Arrow mewling and feels him pad across her stocking feet. She packs an overnight bag and says she’s going to stay with Mary and Sheldon for a while. He looks more confused than anything else. He hardly even tries to talk her out of it, though he looks like he’d like to. He calls her almost as soon as she’s settled at Mary’s.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to beg you to take me back. I promise this is only a logistical call.”

“What is it, Hawkeye?” She tries to sound sensitive and sincere when she says it. After all, she did just break his heart.

“All your stuff is here.” He’s speaking concisely, but he doesn’t sound terse; it’s like he’s talking just as the thoughts occur to him. “I can’t– Can you come get it? Please. Soon?”

She thought she’d been doing him a favor, letting him have the apartment, shoebox that it was. She realizes now that in some ways she’d been making it easier for herself, leaving him surrounded by all the reminders. She mentally scrambles for her schedule.

“Yes,” she says. “Of course. I have a night shift Monday. I’ll come right after on Tuesday morning. Okay?” She isn’t that cruel. She’ll take some of the reminders for herself.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Okay.” And he hangs up before she can apologize, if that’s even what she was going to do. She can just picture him, pacing around the meager square-footage of the flat, hopelessly searching for a single inch of space that doesn’t remind him of her. It’s hard enough to look at Sheldon, knowing that she only met him because of Hawk. She doesn’t know how she’s ever going to read a book that he’d like or listen to a record they used to have again but she figures she will eventually.

Three days later she goes to the apartment first thing in the morning. She’s come straight from the hospital toting an armful of flattened boxes stolen from the back of the pharmacy, so she hasn’t slept. She wonders if he has. Some nights he sleeps like a rock and others he doesn’t at all, lying in bed next to her with his eyes open and getting up just before dawn to sit in the windowsill and watch the sunrise. She will miss him, but she doesn’t regret it.

She has to knock for about five minutes before he turns up to let her in. She still has her key but it doesn’t feel right to burst in. When he finally answers the door he’s clearly just rolled out of bed, in only boxers and a t-shirt from someplace in Bar Harbor. Unshaven, with his eyes bleary and his hair disheveled she is almost convinced to scoop him back into her arms and undo everything she said the other night. But he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and uses his fingers to comb his hair into position and there he is.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“Come in.” He makes room for her in the doorway. “I’ll make some coffee.”

She follows him inside and places her stack of boxes on the kitchen table. He returns wearing a pair of jeans for decency’s sake and starts boiling water.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” she says. She’s been here five whole minutes and he hasn’t made a single joke. Bad sign.

“Did you eat breakfast?” he asks. “I’ll make us some eggs,” he says before she has a chance to answer. She stares at him for a minute as he starts cracking eggs into a bowl, but can’t bear to be around him like this. She shuffles around the apartment looking out for the kind of things he probably wants her to take with her. It’s hard to say what’s hers and what’s his. It’s all kind of _theirs_. Arrow sneaks up on her and nuzzles against her ankle as she leafs through the record collection. She hopes it’s a kindness to let Hawkeye keep the cat.

She can’t believe she’s letting him cook her breakfast, not that she would have been able to stop him. Hawkeye is a compulsive chef. Hawkeye is a compulsive lot of things. She remembers first meeting him, this suave, wisecracking guy fresh off an internship in New York. But he was the first big city hotshot who didn’t complain that things were too slow in the backwoods of Massachusetts, overeager to show off his skills. Instead, he relished every minute that someone didn’t need his help since it meant more people were happy and healthy and safe. Of course, he played at having a big ego like all the surgeons did, but when it came to recognition for his work he cared a lot more about the thanks he got from his patients than any accolades from his superiors. He was intriguing. She couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t have known how it would end up.

“Are you okay?” she asks in between bites of eggs on toast. He’s staring transfixed at the saltshaker. “Hawk?”

“Huh? What?” he says, startled.

“I asked if you were okay.”

He stares into his food. “What kind of question is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“The love of my life just broke up with me apropos of nothing. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” he says, his face almost completely blank.

“Hawkeye–”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Come on,” he grabs both of their just-clean plates and all but throws them in the sink. “Let’s get you packed up.”

She sighs. She feels bad, she supposes, but she is fast getting fed up.

They start in the closet. She assembles a cardboard box and places it on the floor, and they pick out her pieces of clothing and toss them inside.

“This is such a good shirt,” Hawkeye says, holding up a thick red and black checked flannel for a moment before throwing it in the box.

“Portland,” she says, looking at it splayed on top of the dress she wore to Hawkeye’s cousin’s wedding last autumn.

“Portland,” he confirms.

The last thing in there that’s arguably hers is the cardigan. The goddamn purple cardigan. A year of Hawkeye’s life set down in loops and stitches. He tosses it down on top of the shirt.

“You keep the sweater,” she says. “You knitted it.”

“For you,” he says, confused. “I knitted it for you.”

“I don’t– please keep the fucking sweater, Hawkeye.”

“Fine, Jesus. I’ll keep the fucking sweater.” He grabs it from the pile and holds it in his clenched fist, the lavender sleeves just sweeping the floor as it dangles unfolded in his grasp. “How do you want to split up the books?”

“I don’t, uh… want to. I don’t want to split up the books. You keep them.”

“What, all of them?”

“Let me take the records. Okay? Just– let’s just do that.” _I’ll never be able to_ look _at a book again without think of you, Dr. Hawkeye “That’s from_ Last of the Mohicans _” Pierce_ , she thinks bitterly as she seals the box of clothes with packing tape.

She leaves with a handful of other stuff, including some pretty good catches like the radio and the lamp, and the genuine Persian rug her parents gifted them as a housewarming present.

“You’re not gonna shlep all that on the bus, are you? I’d offer to drive, but…” Hawkeye doesn’t own a car.

“Sheldon’s meeting me downstairs in ten minutes.” She’d called him while she finished closing boxes and Hawkeye took a shower.

“Right,” he says. “Good.”

“Yeah, just brilliant,” she says, probably a little too harshly. He looks exhausted.

“Are you mad at me?” he says. “Even if you are, can you give me a break?”

“Hawkeye–”

“I mean, you never even have to see me again if you don’t want to. Price likes me enough to switch my shifts.”

“Hawk–”

“So, what is it? What?”

She wants to tell him to get himself together, to stop wallowing in self-pity, but she also knows it’s only been three days. It’s not like she isn’t upset, too. He’d called her the love of his life. He’s never called her that before. He must have thought it was implied.

“I’m not mad at you, Hawkeye. I don’t have the right,” she says. “I just want you to know that you’re gonna be okay.”

“Jesus Christ, Carl–“

“You’re stronger than you think.”

He just stares at her for a second, a tear threatening to spill out of one maddeningly blue eye, and they both jump out of their skin startled when a car horn honks from downstairs.

“Your chariot awaits,” Hawkeye says.

“Goodbye, Hawkeye,” she says. At least she can give him that.

“Goodbye.”

_What Linda, Stella, and Theo Got:_ One last kiss in the supply closet, a novel, a note

_What Jack and Olive Got:_ Arrow, the lavender sweater, Daniel Pierce’s phone number

_What Hawkeye Got:_ The banner, a dozen roses, shipped out

ii. July, 1950

Hawkeye has some loose ends to tie up. He has loose ends to tie up because his life has just become some permutation of the worst case scenario, and he’s shipping out into the army in two days. It’s his own fault for stopping by the mailbox in the morning on the way to work. He stands, dumbfounded, staring at the orders for so long that he can already tell he’s going to be late. He’d thought his stomach had dropped as far as it could when he read the notice for him to go in for his physical. Well, now his stomach has gone straight through the floor and is malingering somewhere among the subway system. In a fugue state he scales back up the stairs and calls his dad, knuckles white from still gripping the army stationery.

“Dr. Daniel Pierce,” comes the greeting from the other end when the operator finally connects them.

“Dad,” Hawkeye breathes.

“Hawk? You okay?”

“Two days,” he manages to say. “I have two days.”

“Hawkeye–”

“And what about the apartment,” he mutters, “all my stuff. My lease isn’t up for another three months.”

He’s shaking, badly, and he slides down the wall with his head in his hands, stretching the phone cord as he goes. Eventually, Daniel gets him to calm down about as much as can be expected, assuring him that he’ll deal with the rent, and move all his stuff back with him to Maine. More than anything, Hawkeye is helped by the idea that when all this is over, he will be going back to Crabapple Cove, which will never be the target of mortar fire and probably won’t be eroded by the seawater for at least another decade, assuming he has that long.

He goes in to work, not because he has to, but because he has to say goodbye, and he won’t be able to forgive himself if he doesn’t do it in person. He sees Linda first, filling out paperwork at the nurses’ station, her uniform perfect and white right down to her shoes. Their clacking echoes through the hallway as he leads them to an empty office. He kisses her more passionately than he thinks he probably ever has before, and she’s almost as surprised by that as when he tells her why he’s leaving. He gives her his copy of _Tender is the Night_ with a small note scrawled on the inside cover that he tells her not to read until later. He has two more books to deliver before the day is over, and he has to get to Price’s office, too.

To the amusement of no one besides Hawkeye, the chief of surgery at Marlborough Memorial is called Howard Price, and Hawkeye has thoroughly enjoyed spending the past however many years nearly exclusively receiving the other doctor’s mail and memoranda. In lieu of actually talking to him, he simply slips his draft notice envelope under the door and hopes he enjoys reading one last mis-delivered letter.

He goes to Radiology to find Theo. Sweet, innocent Theo, who Hawkeye clocked about thirty seconds after meeting and subsequently spent the next six months flirting with so vehemently he was genuinely surprised nobody tried to find him a psychiatrist. He’s alone in the x-ray room attacking a piece of equipment with a screwdriver, so Hawkeye gives him his _Brideshead Revisited_ and silent tears are already streaming down Theo’s face before their lips meet.

Now he just has to find Stella, Mary’s friend from Emergency. He really hadn’t counted on his casual hookups being the cause of so much heartbreak. He decides he’ll blame the war instead. He finds Stella walking with purpose toward the ICU.

“I heard Price is looking for you,” she says as he follows her on whatever errand she’s running. She always has her finger on the pulse. “You were late.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye says, “late and drafted.”

“What?” She stops suddenly.

“That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

She pulls him into a supply cupboard and locks the door.

“Drafted?” she repeats.

“Yep.”

“Into the military?”

“Into the Salvation Army. Yes, into the military.”

“But you’re a hundred years old,” she says, running a finger along where he knows he’s starting to gray at the temple.

“I’m thirty. And it’s to be a surgeon. In some kind of army hospital. I don’t know.”

“Jesus Christ, Hawkeye,” she says, and leans back against the door. She’s looking up at him with so much pity in her eyes that he almost can’t take it. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He’s not used to not knowing. She reaches up and takes his face in her hands, and kisses him like it’s his last moment on Earth and it all but feels like it is. “I have something for you,” he mumbles into her mouth.

“What?” she says, pulling back. He gets _A Farewell to Arms_ out of his bag and she takes it, looking bewildered.

“You know,” he says. “Just so you have something.” The _to remember me by_ is implied.

The next night, Jack and Olive throw him a party. Everyone comes, even Sheldon and Mary. They paint him a huge banner in red paint on white canvas and string it across the living room. All twelve feet of “ _HAWK, SEE YA WHEN YOU’RE BACK FROM KOREA,”_ get rolled up and placed on the pile of things Jack and Olive are going to deliver to Daniel when he comes to clean out Hawkeye’s apartment. Olive also buys him a dozen red roses from the florist in town and gets all her students to sign the card. They make a beautiful centerpiece on the kitchen table, sitting in a makeshift vase that’s really a lemonade pitcher. Hawkeye brings them Carlye’s sweater, too, and leaves it neatly folded on Olive’s pillow, and hopes she wears it in good health.

The night is almost fun. It would be fun, except every time Hawkeye starts to enjoy himself he remembers that in ten, nine, eight, however many hours he’ll be in the army. He’s fucked, basically, and he’s forgotten how to have a good time. Afterwards he stays up to help Olive clean. She’s gathering empties and putting them in the garbage while he rinses glasses in the sink and bitterly complains. He hasn’t been able to push it out of his mind all night, because of course he hasn’t, because it just isn’t fair, and that’s just the kind of thing he happens to care a lot about.

“Join the army or go to jail,” Hawkeye says, punctuating his thought by angrily setting down his sponge in the sink. It lands with a splash of suds. “A free country, Gracie?”

“Hawk…” Olive says, rubbing a sympathetic hand along his back. Only the two of them are still awake. He loves Olive, and he thinks about kissing her, but then he thinks about Jack in the next room and instead he dries his hands and walks away from the sink.

Arrowsmith is scratching absently at the tweed sofa, looking tired. Hawkeye picks up the yawning gray cat and holds it like a baby, petting his ears.

“You’re gonna stay with your Uncle Jack and your Aunt Olive for a while, okay, Arrow?” He leans his head back in exasperation when he can feel himself tearing up. Olive comes up behind him and places a hand on his shoulder.

“Hawk?”

“It’s just a stupid cat, you know? I shouldn’t be crying over my cat.”

Olive reaches up and wipes one of his tears away. She gives him a feather-light kiss on the cheek.

“That’s not really what you’re crying about,” she says. “Though it would be okay if it were.”

“Yeah,” he says, and sighs, and puts Arrow down. He puts his arm around Olive and pulls her into a hug. “I guess you’re right.”

“I’m never going to be able to teach those books again, I don’t think,” she says softly.

“What books?”

“ _Arrowsmith_ ,” she sniffles. “ _Mohicans._ ”

“Oh no? Not even to keep my memory alive?” At least he wins a small laugh with that one.

“It’s rotten, Hawk. Just rotten,” she says into his shoulder.

“You got that right, kid. You got that right.”

He spends his last night as a civilian on the couch, and gets up at five in the morning to catch his bus. Jack is up, too, since he has to be at the hospital in an hour anyway, and they gently shake Olive awake from where she fell asleep in the armchair by the radio.

“I feel like I’m going to my execution,” Hawkeye says over the cup of coffee Jack poured him that he isn’t drinking. Olive packs him a bagel and cream cheese in his duffel that he’s sure he isn’t going to eat either. The look she gives him when she sees him in his uniform is one of pure misery.

“What?” he says, “Doesn’t suit me?”

She smiles sweetly. “You’re the least military person I’ve ever met.”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Jack claps him on the shoulder as they all three stand in the doorway, willing the minutes not to pass.

“Hey, uh,” Hawkeye starts, “If I never… if, you know, for some reason if I never see you again–”

“Hawkeye, don’t say that,” Olive interrupts.

“No, listen, I, uh… I love you. Both.”

“Write us a couple hundred times, will ya?” Jack says. His eyes are glistening, too.

“No sweat,” Hawkeye says, struggling to keep his voice even. He pulls them both into a hug and kisses them each on the cheek. He tears away without looking either of them in the face again. He wonders when the next time he’ll feel loved like that will be.

_What Trapper Got: The note, one_ BFP _sock, a handful of longan fruit, the watch_

_What Hawkeye Got:_ Leaves of Grass _, the still, two pairs of dirty socks, a kiss on the cheek_

iii. April, 1951

Hawkeye can’t sleep. It’s not unusual. At this point it’s more annoying than anything, to Hawkeye mostly but also to Frank, who’s complaining that his tossing and turning is keeping everyone awake. Hawkeye looks over and sees that Trapper is sound asleep.

“Yeah, right, Frank.”

Frank, however, props himself up in bed and decides to have a rare moment of humanity.

“Come on, Pierce. What’s bothering you?” He sounds genuinely exhausted. “Maybe there’s something we can do about it.”

Hawkeye sighs. There really isn’t, but he decides to see how far Frank’s decency can be stretched.

“It’s my mom’s birthday,” he says to the ceiling. It was gone midnight, which was why he noticed in the first place. He hadn’t told Trapper; he hadn’t told anyone. He hadn’t even told anyone that it might bother him. Frank scoffs.

“Well, why don’t you just call her? I always call my mother on her birthday. After all, it’s the decent thing to do.”

“She’s dead, Frank,” Hawkeye says, getting precious little satisfaction from Frank’s shocked expression. “She’s been dead for twenty years.”

He punctuates his thought by sharply turning on his light, and checking to see that he hasn’t woken Trapper. Frank, to his credit, doesn’t shove his foot any further into his mouth, opting instead to pull his blankets over him and collapse back into bed. Hawkeye hopes the light keeps him up. He grabs his notepad and fidgets with his pen.

“ _Dear Dad…”_ he starts, but no more words come. He crumples the page and starts a new one.

“ _Dear Dad,_

 _I think I’m handling this badly, so I can’t imagine how you’re doing. Just look at the date for context in case this letter hasn’t reached you for another six months.”_ He crumples that page, too, and tosses it toward the dartboard.

“Fuck,” he whispers to himself. He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, now, his covers kicked to the floor. He rocks forward with his head in his hands and is too angry even to cry. He realizes too late that his pen is leaking a river of ink into his palm and down his forearm, and into his hair where his fingers had been resting.

“Now, that’s what I call inky black,” he mutters, tossing the pen uncaringly to the floor and grabbing his robe and towel. Maybe a shower will clear his head, anyway. But naturally, he’s not the only one who’s had that idea tonight.

“Oh, hello, Father,” Hawkeye says in what he hopes is an approximation of genial.

“Hello, Hawkeye,” Mulcahy greets cheerily, recognizing Hawkeye by voice alone as his eyes are closed under a lather of suds.

“You’re up late,” Hawkeye says as he peels off his clothes and steps into the adjacent stall. “Too many Hail Marys?”

“Oh, no,” the Father chuckles. “Just sitting up with one of the boys in post-op. Are you all right, Hawkeye? You sound a bit troubled.”

“It’s nothing, Father,” Hawkeye says, bending slightly to get his temple directly under the spout, watching black droplets of ink fall to the floor. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Oh?” Mulcahy says, rinsing from his final scrub and releasing the chain to stop the flow of water.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye says quietly, and sighs. He stands back up and lets the water batter his chest.

“You’ve got a little something, just, _there_ ,” Mulcahy says, indicating Hawkeye’s hairline as he dons his glasses. “Could be ink.”

Hawkeye taps his nose. “Ink stains, bloodstains,” he says. “Something something, the pen is mightier than the sword.” He knows he’s showing too much of his hand just then, since the Father will really know something is up when Hawkeye can’t even be bothered to fully formulate his wisecrack.

“Oh,” Mulcahy says. “Yes.” He lingers by the door just long enough for Hawkeye to stop him before he leaves.

“It’s, uh… It’s not to do with this, really. With the war. It would be bothering me even if I were home.”

“Not nearly this much, I would imagine.”

“Maybe,” Hawkeye says. He stops the water and leans against the shower door blinking drops out of his eyes. “My mom’s been gone a long time, but today’s her birthday. That’s all.”

“I see,” Father Mulcahy says, and his expression is all sympathy and no pity. It’s even more refreshing than the shower.

“I was trying to write my dad about it, but…” he trails off. “It just doesn’t feel right not to be with him.”

“Of course,” Father Mulcahy says softly, tying his robe and draping his towel over his shoulder. He takes one step closer and keeps peering up at Hawkeye, who swallows.

“It’s different for me, you know. For me she’s been dead twice as long as she was ever alive. But for him? You know.”

“He doesn’t have it worse than you, you know,” the Father says. “Just different.”

“Hm.” Hawkeye looks down at his right arm, still blotted with ink. “I think I know what to put in my letter.”

“That’s good, Hawkeye,” Mulcahy tells him. “And please, let me know if you ever want to talk.”

Hawkeye turns the water back on as Mulcahy leaves, and scours the stains quickly to get back to the Swamp. He forgoes his filthy covers and leans over his pad of paper in bed, his hair dripping wet patches that threaten to tear the pages. 

“ _Dear Mom,_

 _Sorry you haven’t heard from me in a while. To be fair, I haven’t heard from you much recently, either. It’s okay, though. As Father Mulcahy would say, I forgive you.”_ He taps his pencil to his chin and looks through the gap in his tent flaps at the pitch dark sky.

“ _Some days it looks like I’ll be seeing you again a little sooner than anticipated. Don’t worry, I know there’s not really an afterlife, but it’s just a figure of speech to mean most days I’m pretty afraid I’m going to die. Isn’t that fucked up?”_

“Are you crazy?” he mutters aloud. “You can’t say ‘fucked up’ to your mother.” He crosses it out.

“ _Were you afraid,”_ he writes, “ _when you knew you were going to die?”_

He’s too exhausted to think, and he’s too wired to sleep. His hands shake as he places the unfinished letter on his cubby. The pencil falls on the floor and rolls under his cot to join the exploded pen. It’s mostly the fear that drives him crazy. The fear, then the homesickness, then the boredom. And the perpetual nausea that accompanies all three.

“Hawk,” a voice comes from the other side of the tent.

“Trap?” Hawkeye says. In the faint light of his lamp he can see Trapper facing him, lying on his side with his eyes still closed.

“You sound like you’re having an episode over there. You all right?” he mumbles groggily. Hawkeye sighs.

“Not really, no.” He sees Trapper slowly smile.

“You’re not supposed to actually answer the question, Hawk.”

“I thought you could handle it,” Hawkeye says. “The real me.” He makes it take the tone of a joke, since it’s been so long since he’s tried anything else, but he isn’t quite sure if maybe he wouldn’t have preferred to be serious, just this once.

“I can handle it. I love the real you.”

“You’re asleep, Trap. You’re talking nonsense.” Hawkeye can’t take it. He wants the love, needs it, but can’t accept it, or believe it.

“No more than when I’m awake,” Trapper says, and rolls over. Hawkeye hears his breathing slow, and eventually he turns his light off. After five more minutes he’s sure Trapper really is asleep again, though he’s not sure he ever wasn’t. Hawkeye’s heart is pounding in his chest.

“I love you, too, Trap,” he says aloud to the silent tent. No one stirs. One day, he thinks, he’ll say it when Trapper is awake.

_What BJ Got: A chopper ride, a drink, rescinded travel orders_

_What Hawkeye Got: A nervous disorder, casualties, a tank_

iv. August, 1952

“ _Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy biiiirth-day, dear Hawkeye–_ ”

“Hrmph?” Hawkeye mumbles as he wakes up at the sound of his name.

“ _Happy birthday to you_ ,” BJ finishes quietly. It’s not even six a.m. but it’s sweltering hot and BJ’s already sweating through his shirt. He’s holding out a cupcake with a single candle in it, lit, and threatening to burn away while Hawkeye peers at it, bleary eyes and dumbfounded.

“Beej?” he says.

“C’mon, Hawk, make a wish,” BJ prompts him.

“Right.” Hawkeye spends his whole life making wishes. He tries to clear his head while the dancing flame fills his field of vision. Birthday candles are almost too civilian for him to process. If it wasn’t so goddamn hot he might be able to imagine he’s home. He thinks of wishing for something like an errant shipment of pistachio ice cream to make its way to the base or for Trapper to have taken his fucking _JFXM_ socks with him then he left or for BJ to kiss him on the mouth the next time they’re alone, but instead he just wishes for what he’s always wishing for every second of every day, like doing it over a birthday candle will somehow manifest it into reality where regular wishes don’t. _Peace, please_ , he thinks as he lightly blows out the candle, absolutely not thinking about the fact that BJ definitely felt his breath on his knuckles. _Forever_.

“So, uh, what is this?” Hawkeye says, propping himself up and taking the cupcake from BJ. He splits it in half and hands the slightly smaller one to BJ; it is his birthday after all.

“Cheers,” BJ says as Hawkeye takes a big bite. “Well, I told everyone that it was your birthday last winter, so I couldn’t very well tell them it was also your birthday now.”

“You could tell them you lied before.”

“What, and be the boy who cried birthday?”

“Beej–”

“So, I snuck to the kitchen this morning, spent a little quality time with Igor–”

“Your faithful henchman.”

“Right,” BJ grins, “and whipped up a batch of these. It’s Peg’s recipe.”

“Ah, that explains why they’re so dry.”

“Hey, cut that out!” BJ says while he’s laughing. “You know there’s no goddamn _ingredients_ in there. These call for a pound and a half of butter and you know what’s in there?”

“No, what?”

“Two tablespoons of vegetable oil.”

“Smooth,” Hawkeye says, popping the rest in his mouth. “How’d you even know it was my birthday?” he asks while he’s still chewing.

“How do you think? I had Radar show me your file,” BJ answers while Hawkeye says, “You had Radar show you my file.”

“Right,” BJ nods.

“How embarrassing. Now you know what _B.F._ stands for.”

“Right,” BJ says again. “Brank Furns.”

“Rat!” Hawkeye says, grabbing his pillow from behind him and tossing it at BJ.

“Fink!” BJ retaliates, lunging forward to mock-wrestle Hawkeye amidst his covers. This as well all has to happen at the level of a stage whisper as Charles is still asleep across the tent, but they’ve just about managed the art of fake-fighting at any volume as needs must.

The rush of BJ on top of him, well not _on top of him_ but basically on top of him has woken Hawkeye up more than any cup of coffee ever could, but reveille sounds before he lets himself get carried away, and BJ is untimely wrested from him and back to his own cot.

“Lay on, Macduff,” Hawkeye mutters to himself as he watches BJ leave for the showers in his robe. He’ll join him just as soon as his heart stops pounding, which may be in 1953. He wishes he had noticed himself falling in love with BJ so he could have stopped it. Then again, he knows himself well enough to know that would have been impossible, anyway. There’s a reason he didn’t wish for that when he had the chance.

v. July, 1946

Hawkeye doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t hold fidelity as a principle per se, but he does know that it’s highly upsetting to the cheatee to be cheated on, and for this reason he abstains. It’s not as if he doesn’t sleep around; he just doesn’t sleep around if he’s seeing someone. If he’s seeing someone, he’s really seeing someone. He falls in love hard, and he falls in love fast, and he can usually tell after his first conversation with someone whether it’s going to be serious or not. He hasn’t been wrong yet.

Carlye Breslin is the first nurse who ever assists him at the Marlborough hospital and he’s so nervous that he’s not quite sure he isn’t the one assisting her. That, and she makes him laugh. Make Hawkeye laugh and he’s yours forever. After nearly a year it’s her idea that they should move in together. Actually, it’s not her idea– Hawkeye’s been thinking it nearly since he laid eyes on her– but he would never say anything if he worried in the slightest it would drive her away. So after nearly a year she finally brings it up.

“Get a place, together? Us, you and me?” He’s asking like he doesn’t want to, but he wants to. God, he wants to.

“Of course us, you and me.” She’s smiling, trying to get him to take it easy. People think he’s got some kind of fear of commitment, but he really doesn’t. He doesn’t think so, anyway. “You can’t live your whole life with only Arrowsmith for a roommate.”

“Sure I can,” he says. “Wait, you want to be my _roommate_?”

“Shut up, Hawkeye,” she says, and strides across the room to where he standing by Jack’s radio. “I love you,” she says, and kisses him quickly on the mouth, “so much.”

“Well, in that case,” he says, and kisses her back, leaning down into it, trying to make her melt. He can feel her smile between his lips.

“So that’s a yes, then?” she says, one hand in his hair, the other gripping his shirt, her stance lopsided like depending on his answer she’s going to drag him to the sofa or not.

“Yes,” he says enthusiastically. _God, yes, since the day I met you_. And he’s right, too, and she lightly pushes him backwards, leading them both to the couch and getting as horizontal as possible. Her hand is up his shirt but they don’t get much past kissing when they hear a key jimmy in the door.

“Don’t worry, Jack!” Hawkeye calls as Carlye hastens to regain her composure. “I’m moving out!”

vi. October, 1951

Hawkeye is being court-martialed. Actually, Colonel Potter has assured him that this is not a court-martial, it’s a pre-court-martial where they determine if your offense was serious enough to warrant a real court-martial, but Hawkeye is wearing his Class-As; BJ, Radar, and Potter have all been subpoenaed, and he’s about to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so he pretty much feels like he’s being court-martialed. To top it off, he’s being pre-court-martialed for _mutiny_ , which means if it goes to trial and he’s convicted, he could face the death penalty. It’s almost too absurd to be frightening. Almost.

“You really think Frank wants you hung?” BJ says as they walk with trepidation toward the makeshift courthouse. Hawkeye can practically hear the funeral march playing.

“‘Hanged,’” he corrects him. “ _Hung_ on the other hand– well, maybe he wants that, too.”

BJ smirks, but then his expression shifts to something more sincere.

“It’s unfair,” BJ says. They’re lingering outside the door while Potter and Radar catch up.

“What?”

“How come I never met you before?”

Hawkeye lets that sit in the air between them for a moment. _How come_ , indeed?

“Life’s not fair, Beej,” he says. “You oughta know that by now.”

“Any last words, _Captain_?” Frank all but spits as he approaches Hawkeye from behind.

“Suck my dick, Frank.”

“That’s the spirit, Pierce,” Potter says, clapping him on the shoulder while BJ hardly attempts to stifle his laugh. Maybe this is all worth it for the chances he’s getting to make BJ smile. And anyway, he gets off. The charges get dropped, that is.

vii. October, 1950

Hawkeye and Trapper are going dancing. Not with each other, don’t be ridiculous. Obviously, they’re going with two separate girls. The bar in Seoul is crowded and a little sleazy, and the girl up front is singing Lena Horne in Korean. Hawkeye sings along under his breath as he holds Lieutenant Reid, a nurse from the 8063rd, close to his chest and whispers in her ear.

“ _Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky. Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together_.” He feels her giggle into his neck. “ _Keeps raining all of the time_.”

The two of them spin slowly together, and when he looks up he sees Trapper in the mirror image of his position, and they lock eyes with their dates and the rest of the bar between them.

“ _Life is bare. Gloom and misery everywhere, stormy weather,_ ” Hawkeye keeps musing, “ _and I just can’t get my poor self together. I’m weary all of the time._ ” He grows tired while saying the words like somehow he’s manifesting their truth.

“You’ve got great pipes, Captain,” Reid says. She’s got a sexy, kind of husky voice, and he knows she must really be into him because he isn’t that great of a singer at all. He tries to come up with a good quip but gets distracted when he can’t even remember her first name. Something with a vowel maybe.

“Well, you know what they say…” he manages, hoping that it’s something. She just laughs again, and pulls him closer. He looks over her blonde coiffure and finds Trapper doing the same. Hawkeye doesn’t change his expression; he can’t think of anything he could change it to that wouldn’t risk the moment ending, and he wants to keep Trapper’s eyes locked on his for as long as possible.

With the combination of Trap’s eyes and Reid’s hands on him, he’s working pretty hard stopping himself from getting excited. Not working hard enough, apparently, and Reid takes the opportunity, combined with the fact that the bar is crowded enough that no one can else can really see what they’re doing, to use her left leg to rub up between his. He swallows thickly and slides his hands farther down her back. He watches Trapper’s eye line follow them. Hawkeye closes his eyes. There is way too much going on right now. He’s strung out, wound up, exhausted, half hard, and most of all he wants to go home.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he all but moans to the nurse who’s name he still can’t recall. _Elle? Ella? Eliza?_

“In a minute,” she responds in kind. “I like it here.” She smells sweet, and like she uses the same Japanese shampoo as Margaret when she’s trying to look good for a general, and as the song ends Hawkeye turns them both around again so he’s facing the singer and Reid can look at Trapper for all he cares.

A minute into a song he doesn’t recognize he’s concentrating intently on not ruining the lining of his Pinks, which nurse… _Eva? Ava? Emma?_ is not making easy. He gets snapped out of it, for which he’s almost thankful, when some dumb G.I. knocks into him from behind. He’s ready to make a snarky comment and call him out on it, but before he even turns around he can tell that it’s Trapper. The man who makes army issue aftershave lotion smell like it comes from a catalog.

And Trap stays there. He doesn’t move away, so neither does Hawkeye. He can’t believe it, that Trapper started it and he’s not letting up. He’s just having them dance back to back, their shoulder blades grazing each other in a way Hawkeye finds ten times more intoxicating than any martini and anything Lieutenant Reid thinks she could pull on him. And there’s no way Trap just doesn’t feel it, or notice it, because he came all the way through the crowd just to do it. Hawkeye feels like he’s being electrocuted, like he has little shock therapy nodes all along his spine that go off wherever Trap touches him. He doesn’t know how much longer he can last like that, how much more of this he can take.

Reid leans up and whispers to him, “Wanna come back to my place?” He agrees almost entirely because it’s a joke he would make, since he knows it’s not really her he wants to go back with. He’s already dizzily anticipating the embarrassment when he doesn’t make the night very worth her while, but he manages to last longer than he’d imagined because he’s so distracted. Of course, that means the sex is only okay, but Reid seems to get off once or twice while Hawkeye accepts that one bad review from an 8063rd nurse should be fine and not ruin his reputation.

Hawkeye doesn’t cheat, but only because it upsets the cheatee to be cheated on. And he sleeps around, but not when he’s in love. He hardly even knows what his principles are when it comes to fidelity. He just knows that he hasn’t been getting any, or getting any _good_ any anyway since he fell head over heels over dick for Trapper John McIntyre. The problem isn’t that he wants to be with Trap, but that he isn’t with him. And somehow the cruel hands of fate have decided that if he can’t be with Trap, then he can’t be with anybody. And what did Sophocles say about fate? That trying to avoid your destiny just guarantees it? _Yeah_ , Hawkeye thinks as he sneaks a shower before stealing back to his own hotel room in the middle of the night, _he might have been on to something_.

viii. November, 1951

Something must have gone badly with Margaret because Frank actually makes for the still when he comes back to the Swamp. Hawkeye doesn’t say anything, just watches with his eyebrows raised as Frank fills a glass, drains it, fills another, and collapses into the chair next to Hawkeye’s cot where he’s been sitting, cross-legged, detangling balls of yarn.

“Oh, hi, Frank,” Hawkeye says when they’re eye level.

“I don’t have to take that from you, you know.”

“Come here often?”

“Are you stupid or something? I live here.”

“Right, Frank,” Hawkeye concedes, and goes back to his knitting. By the time BJ gets back from post-op duty, Frank is hammered, staggering around the tent and idly dropping horrifying facts about his childhood like they’re commonplace.

“What’s up with him?” BJ says, easing himself onto the other end of Hawkeye’s bed and putting his feet up on an errant footlocker there; whether it’s his or Hawkeye’s both indiscernible and inconsequential.

“He’s drunk,” Hawkeye explains.

“No kidding. How you doing, Frank?” BJ says.

“What’s it to you, Hunni…bee?” Frank slurs, before tripping on something and landing face first in his bed.

“Cute,” Hawkeye says under his breath.

“Him or me?” BJ asks.

“Both, honeybee,” Hawkeye answers, returning a conspiratorial smile to BJ. Frank coughs and splutters a little, then pushes himself around so at least he’s lying face-up. He props himself up on some pillows and beholds the scene in front of him, Hawkeye perusing some book he's read a million times, his feet in BJ’s lap as the latter lounges on Hawkeye’s bed despite his own being not two yards away and unoccupied.

“I could have blackmailed you, you know,” Frank says suddenly, “but I– _hic_ – didn’t.”

“What are you talking about, Frank?” Hawkeye says, assuming this is regrettably about him.

“I could’ve gotten you kicked out,” Frank says. Hawkeye and BJ share a glance, confused, but intrigued.

“You gonna make me beg?”

“Disbonorable– dishonhonor– dishonoralby… discharged.”

“Out with it, Frank. What is this about?” Hawkeye says, losing patience. “This better be good,” he mutters to BJ. 

“McIntyre,” Frank says, like that explains everything. The blood drains from Hawkeye’s face and he hopes it’s not noticeable, to Frank or to BJ. He places his book down, willing his hands not to shake.

“What about him?” Hawkeye asks, surprising even himself with how steadily it comes out.

“I saw you. And him. What you did. Together.” _Hm_ , Hawkeye thinks. _Stay calm. On the other hand_ , _shit shit shit shit shit_.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up, Frank, or I’ll sew your tongue to your gums.”

“Hm,” is all Frank says. Okay, so he’s in the clear. BJ shoots him a look like _what was that about_ and Hawkeye does his best to shrug it off, looking all non-committal-like. Then,

“You kissed him,” Frank says. Hawkeye feels his heart rise to his throat and is speechless for the first time in a long time that he can remember. BJ does a confused double take between him and Frank and Hawkeye can’t get a good read on his expression beyond the obvious. Again, s _hit shit shit shit shit_. And he’d thought him and BJ might have had a good thing going. Ah, well. Better to have loved and lost than to murder your tent mate in cold blood, as the old saying goes.

“Wait,” BJ says, “ _If_ that’s true, why didn’t you say anything at the time?” The amount of emphasis he puts on the ‘if’ isn’t encouraging, but it’s still a good question.

“Because once you found out I’d protected you, you’d have to like me,” Frank says past BJ, to Hawkeye.

“Jesus, shit, Frank,” BJ says slowly, enunciating each word like a curse. “You are so fucking stupid.” This time Frank really doesn’t say anything. BJ turns back to Hawkeye like a doting nurse. “Are you doing all right?” he asks, the concern in his eyes looking perfectly genuine.

“Um, I think so,” Hawkeye says, even though his entire body is numb. “I don’t really know what just happened.”

“Me neither,” BJ admits. He gets up and fixes them both drinks from the still. When he returns he sits in the chair instead of the bed. “It’s not really my business,” BJ goes on, “but I guess I know if Frank was lying.”

“Well, yeah,” Hawkeye says, and BJ looks surprised that he would admit it that easily, “it’s not your business.” _Good save, Hawk_ , he thinks. Even his internal monologue is sarcastic. Hawkeye sips his drink and returns to his book, willing his fingers not to shake. He tries his best to look like he’s reading, even flipping pages at carefully timed intervals, but he can’t make his eyes focus. He can feel BJ looking at him even after he goes to his own cot and lies down, leaving Hawkeye to stew in silence.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” BJ says at the same time as Hawkeye says, “It was just one time,” because it was.

“Oh,” Hawkeye says.

“Ah,” BJ says. And then the most amazing thing happens. They start to laugh. And Hawkeye can tell from the crinkle in his eyes and the timbre of the sound that BJ isn’t laughing at him in the slightest, because of course he isn’t.

“Hawkeye, you’re incredible,” BJ says, his voice full of admiration that Hawkeye recognizes but doesn’t understand. BJ is the first married person Hawkeye’s ever met who doesn’t seem to hate the fact that he’s married. He almost loves hearing him talk about Peg simply because it’s so beautiful to hear him sound so full of love. He almost swears he’s talking like that now.

“Oh, yeah?” Hawkeye says.

“Yeah. I wish I knew you in real life.”

ix. December, 1950

It’s their first Christmas in Korea. ‘First’ feels pessimistic, because it seems to imply there will be more than one. But Hawkeye has never been an optimist particularly, and as each week rolls by he becomes more and more convinced that even next year they may not in fact be home for Christmas. He and Trapper are throwing a roll of toilet paper back and forth in the Swamp to keep warm, entertaining themselves watching it unravel like a streamer.

“You know my parents never told me about Santa Claus?” Hawkeye says.

“How’d they get around that, Hawk?”  
“Or rather, they never told me he was real. They told me he was a story all the other kids’ parents were going to tell them about, but they were gonna let me in on a secret, that he was made up.” Maybe it sounds odd, but it’s a very fond memory for him. He remembers going into school after winter break and arguing with every kid who told him what Santa brought them, debunking their every explanation for how he could have gotten into their houses, and into everybody’s house in so short a time.

“That’s ridiculous,” Trapper says. “We’re not telling our girls there’s no Santa until they figure it out themselves. And maybe not even then. Save ourselves the trouble of buying presents,” he says with a mischievous glint in his eye. Hawkeye laughs, which makes Trapper laugh, and the cardboard roll falls to the floor between them. Hawkeye draws his knees up to sit cross legged on his cot, and pulls another blanket around him.

“Mom just barely tolerated Dad’s Christmas inclinations,” Hawkeye goes on. “She hated having a tree in the house, and she’d give me her presents over Chanukah instead.”

“Now that’s luxury,” Trap says.

“Right,” Hawkeye says, grinning. “Like the opposite of all those kids who had their birthday right around Christmas or New Year.”

“Oh yeah, that’s rough,” Trapper agrees, getting up to pour himself a martini. “Care for a snort in your snifter?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

They sit back and sip their freshly brewed drinks. Last time Hawkeye had been down to the nearest village, some locals had showed him an unfamiliar berry, claiming it improved even the most inexpertly made moonshine. They’d sold him a pound and a half with a money back guarantee and hadn’t been wrong. With the addition of the longan berries the lighter fluid coming from the still almost tastes like real gin.

“Now, that’s really not bad,” Trapper says.

“Finest kind,” Hawkeye agrees. Trapper sighs, and shakes his head.

“We better get home soon or I swear I’m not gonna stop until I’ve ended the war single-handed.” He must still be thinking about his girls. Trap may be a master at compartmentalizing but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love each compartment.

“Hey,” Hawkeye says, “that’s my line.”

x. May, 1951

Trap’s orders come in while Hawkeye is on R&R, because of course they do. He thinks he’ll be bald from pulling his hair out by the time he finally sees his wife again. He almost doesn’t believe that this wackjob from Maine means as much to him as Louise and the girls, but he has to believe it since he’s living it. He almost thanks God for his ulcer since it gave Hawkeye a chance to say something approaching goodbye when he thought he was getting sent home before.

He gets drunk because of course he does. He gets naked and runs through the mess tent (with no clothes on) because of course he does. Because it’ll make a good story and he needs something for Hawkeye to remember him by. He calls Hawkeye at the hotel every hour on the hour for an entire day and he doesn’t answer because of course he doesn’t. Hawkeye doesn’t know that he’s gonna regret it for the rest of his life. Trapper waits till the last possible second to start writing the note, because he doesn’t have a goddamn clue what to say. He can’t leave anything that could be misconstrued (or construed correctly), so the truth is likely out of the question. ‘ _Hawk,'_ he writes, maybe half a dozen times before tearing out each page and throwing it on the floor.

Also, he’s hungover beyond belief. Six aspirin companies are bidding for his head. The Swamp is empty, Frank having set up shop insensitively quickly in Henry’s tent after he… well, whatever. Trapper catches himself staring at Hawkeye’s cubby, full of books and knickknacks, condensing his incondensable personality down into a couple of trinkets. He lies down on Hawkeye’s cot and takes a deep breath. It doesn’t really smell like him; he’s been gone nearly a week so why would it? The sheets are dirty enough and old enough that they just sort of smell like sweat. Even so, Trapper leans back onto the pillow and smells Hawkeye, though he knows he uses the same army issue shampoo as everybody else.

When he sits up, an errant sock is stuck to his jacket by a loose thread, _BFP_ embroidered on the inside in white on army green. He runs over the initials with his thumb. He thinks of Hawkeye, stitching them in himself, the same way he’d written _Hawkeye_ in chalk on the inside of his boots and in permanent marker on the masking tape marking his hook outside the scrub room. Before he can eschew the thought, he crumples the sock in his hand and shoves it in his pocket. It makes a noise against something, and he draws a crinkled page out from under it.

“ _Hawk,”_ it says. “ _I didn’t want it to go like this._ ” He doesn’t remember having written it, so it could have been from any time in the last three days. He goes to the still, but doesn’t get a drink. Instead, he shoves a handful of dried up longan berries into his other pocket and sits back down on his own cot. He keeps reading.

“ _I didn’t want any of this. Isn’t it funny that in an ideal world, I never would of met you? Not ‘funny,’ maybe, but something. I don’t know, Hawk, you’re better with words than me.”_

He scours his own shelves for any place he could leave the note that he could be sure no one but Hawkeye would find it. He could leave it inside that book of poetry; nobody would look in there. It was Hawkeye’s to begin with, anyway. He’d given it to Trapper off of his own shelf saying Whitman suited him, that Trap contained more multitudes than he did. He places the book on the bed next to him and keeps reading the note.

“ _You’re everything a guy could hope for. You’re everything a guy could hope to find in a crummy place like this. I guess if there’s one thing I really want to say to you, it’s,”_ and it ends there. Trapper frantically flips the page and feels in his pocket for more but that’s it. He couldn’t finish it then and he certainly can’t finish it now. He thinks about leaving it for Hawkeye anyway but the half-baked effort feels almost worse than nothing at all.

“Cap’n McIntyre? Trapper?” Radar says through the screen in the door. Trapper tosses the book onto Hawkeye’s bed and it lands splaying unceremoniously across his blanket. “Jeep’s here.”

“Right,” he mutters to himself, before rising, and taking one last look at his surroundings. It’s home and it’s not home, so he’s leaving home and he’s going home, and he can’t believe he wishes he was staying just one more day, since the only reason it might be home is because of Hawkeye. But Hawkeye isn’t here, so home is in Boston, and so he goes.

“You all right, sir?” Radar asks once he’s outside.

“Sure, Radar. Thrilled.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Fascinating.”

Radar leads him to the jeep. Some private he doesn’t know is the driver.

“Guess this is goodbye,” Radar says, his voice almost imperceptibly shaking.

“Guess so,” Trapper says, and he thinks about going for the handshake, but instead envelopes Radar in a hug that he wishes could travel seven hundred miles. “Hey, Radar. Would you give something to Hawkeye for me?”

“Yeah, anything.”

“Yeah, okay.” Trapper looks to see who’s around. Then he leans down and kisses Radar.

He almost kisses him on the lips. Almost. But the driver is right there, and Radar would freak out, and Hawkeye, too, if he ever even got it. So he goes for the cheek, a solid, charitably dry peck on the cheek, and then he hops in the back of the jeep before he can see Radar’s shocked expression.

His head is pounding as they rumble across the road. On the way to the airbase he checks the time, and is confused to see he’s wearing Hawkeye’s watch, the silver one he’d stolen to finance that poker game. He doesn’t remember quite when they got mixed up, but then again, there was always so little differentiation between what exactly belonged to each of them. According to Hawkeye’s watch, he should have been back from leave over an hour ago, but he was late because of course he was. He loves to make an entrance. And Trapper is making a hell of an exit.

xi. February. 1953

They’re not sleeping after a seemingly endless O.R. session. Instead, they’re swapping stories of medical marvels over veritably lethal coffee in the mess tent and praying for dreamless sleep when the inevitable unconsciousness eventually comes.

“The first time I ever had to do anything like what we do in there,” BJ says, speaking slowly like he’s struggling to make his mouth move, “we were taking glass fragments out of this guy’s stomach.”

“Glass fragments?” Hawkeye says, surprised mid-yawn. “How’d they get in there.”

“Turned out he had pica. He ate a lightbulb.”

At that, Hawkeye laughs maniacally. He can’t stop from cackling with his whole body, the sound and visual of which only serves to make BJ laugh and Charles scoff.

“Beej, that’s crazy!”

“You’re telling me,” BJ says. “That’s the real reason I got out of San Francisco.”

“Okay, okay, but that’s nothing,” Hawkeye says, regaining his composure and pushing himself to as close to upright as he can manage. “One time, I was in this Mexican place, Lupe’s, down on sixth avenue, best refried beans in the city– anyway, this woman starts having some kind of, you know, attack, episode, something.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Turns out she’d gotten _second degree burns_ from eating food that was too hot. Definitely the strangest ‘is anybody here a doctor’ I’ve ever gotten.”

“Surely you jest,” Charles interjects.

“Oh, yeah?” Hawkeye prompts.

“Medical school and an internship in New York and that’s all you have to show for it? Shame.”

“And I’m sure you have something better?” BJ adds.

“Certainly. During my internship in Boston when I was often saddled with clinic duty, a young mother came in with her son, complaining that his breathing sounded strange, like whistling, and on more troubling occasions, a honk.”

“A honk,” Hawkeye repeats, while he and BJ share a glance.

“Correct. As it happens, the boy had lodged a pen cap up one nostril. Unable to get it out the traditional way, he figured if he put another one up the other nostril, the original pen cap would simply pop out.”

“A penchant for pen caps,” BJ halfway quips.

“So what about the honking?” Hawkeye asks.

“Of course. We didn’t notice until we took x-rays that he’d also swallowed a kazoo.”

BJ chuckles. “Delicious. I love when the kazoos are in season.”

“Well, listen, you wanna talk clinic? I can top that,” Hawkeye interjects. “One time, this guy came into the E.R.– my friend Mary worked reception there so she came and got me– and he had,” Hawkeye taps the table with each word, “six cuban cigars up his ass.”

“What, on purpose?” BJ says through a laugh.

“Yeah!” Hawkeye goes on, “He smuggled them out of Havana like that on an airplane. Then when he couldn’t shift them, he came to the hospital.”

Charles looks like he’s about to say something to try and catch him in a bluff but he’s interrupted by the sound of choppers overhead.

“You’re kidding,” BJ says.

“Me? Sure,” Hawkeye says, “but I think they’re serious.”

xii. August, 1946

The apartment is basically horrible. It’s smaller than a breadbox, smells even before they bring the cat, and the paint is chipping off the walls in big hunks half an inch thick. They love every measly square inch of it. Decorating it is a dream come true for Hawkeye. He loves clutter, lives for it. Loves posters on the wall, magnets on the fridge, and books piled high on every shelf organized according to no order whatsoever. He knows Carlye thinks it’s ridiculous, and that it’s one of the things she loves most about him. 

They paint it themselves in a dark green color that Hawkeye’s dad tells him over the phone sounds _sophisticated_. He’s a little too surprised for Hawkeye’s taste at the fact that he’s acting so grown up, but he supposes that’s to be expected. They eat pizza on the floor of the living room while Hawkeye threatens to tip a tin of paint over Carlye’s head.

“I dare you to,” she says, grinning.

“No, you don’t,” he grins back. “You know I’ll do it.”

“Nuh-uh,” she taunts.

“Try me.”

“I am!” she says. “I dare you!”

He leans over to grab the paint and she leaps to her feet. He feints at her with the bucket and she tries to dodge, and he would have gotten her but the lid is still on. She takes the chance and starts running a lap around the barren room while he struggles to get the top off. When he finally does, they both laugh hysterically as he chases her around the room. He stops in his tracks and she bumps into him, spilling huge globs of green paint on the floor and onto the pizza, which they stare at for a second before it just makes them laugh harder.

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him and while he’s distracted, she dips her hand into the paint then smears the whole palmful through his hair. He yelps and shakes his head like a wet dog, then doubles over laughing, gripping her shoulders. He gets her on the arms, she bops him on the nose and paints two green lines across his cheekbones like a football player, then shirts and pants are coming off, doused in green stains that’ll never quite come out. There’s a mattress on the floor of the other room but they don’t bother; they can’t take their hands off each other or stop laughing long enough to think about it. That’s what they have. That’s what they’re like. Hawkeye thinks he could get used to this.

xiii. July, 1953

BJ almost doesn’t know why he gets in the chopper. When he looks at Margaret and his voice is cracking when he asks her to talk to Hawkeye and she’s happy and sad and angry all at the same time, that’s when he doesn’t know why he gets in. He has to see Peg and Erin as soon as possible, of course he does, but in the back of his mind he knows the travel orders are wrong, and somewhere along the line his plane will be grounded and he will be sent back home– shit, not home, sent back to the four-oh-fucking-seven-seven, and he won’t have left Hawkeye at all. So he has to leave, because of course he does, but it’s okay because he’s not really leaving.

He drinks a bourbon and water in the Transient Officers’ Club on Guam. He is in love with Hawkeye, who did not buy him a drink at the Transient Officers’ Club at Kimpo on his first day in Korea. The magnificent thing about Hawkeye is that he is just a good person. He is a goodperson who, with no use of hyperbole whatsoever, has been driven insane being surrounded by so much bad. BJ doesn’t know if he’s coming or going; all he knows is he wants to go home. The problem is he doesn’t know where the _fuck_ that is anymore! But it doesn’t matter, because he was right. Flights to the states are grounded, and the eminent Captain Hunnicutt is needed back at the fucking-fighting-four-oh-seven-seven.

In the chopper he loses his guts, his nerve, and his mind in that order. _Maybe Hawk won’t even notice I was gone_ , he thinks as his leg bounces up and down uncontrollably. He doesn’t even know if Hawkeye will be there when he gets back; he could still be in the hospital for all he knows. He isn’t so different from Hawkeye, he thinks, since they’re both in denial. But if Hawkeye is back when he gets there then that means they both aren’t anymore.

He wonders what Hawkeye would have done if it were him. Of course, it never would have been him, because there’s no world in which BJ is the one who had a nervous breakdown and Hawkeye is the one getting sent home, because of course there isn’t. Because it’s Hawkeye, who didn’t get to say goodbye to his mom, or to Trapper, or even to Radar, and BJ realizes all too late that he has added his name to the too long list of people who left Hawkeye, his favorite person on the entire _planet,_ without so much as a note or a goodbye.

He wants to see him as soon as he lands. He needs to, or he thinks he’ll explode, scream, cry, throw up, and run until he’s wading waste deep in the Yalu River. He imagines Hawkeye meeting him at the helipad, them running into each others arms and not letting go until the peace accords are signed. Instead, Hawkeye comes up behind them while he’s talking to Colonel Potter and barely lets their arms graze. Hawkeye, who touches, and clutches, and clings, and holds you upright, and he doesn’t even offer BJ a cursory handshake. He wants to grab his stupid _sane_ face and kiss him until his lips are chapped. He would do it if he didn’t think Potter would misinterpret it. Or interpret it correctly.

He wants to spend every waking second he has left with Hawkeye, but he can’t, because he needs him to sleep. Margaret has been furious with him since he got back, so she helps him arrange the stones because she also understands why he did it. They have to stop every fifteen minutes to lie on the ground and get their strength back. When they finally finish Margaret lies with her head across BJ’s stomach and times her breathing with his, and they rise and fall in synch with the sun, too, as it emerges over the mountains.

“This is a lot more intense than half a dozen cupcakes,” BJ muses.

“Do I know what you’re saying?” Margaret says.

“Last summer,” BJ explains, “for Hawkeye’s birthday. I snuck out of the Swamp before sunrise and baked him some cupcakes. The sacks of flour were heavy but Igor helped me.”

“I thought Hawkeye’s birthday was in the winter,” Margaret says, mostly to herself. “Don’t know why.”

“Nah,” BJ says. “August.”

“Huh,” Margaret says. “He’ll be home for his birthday. Can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.” 

“Maybe that’s what he wished for,” BJ half-jokes and half-wonders.

“Partly, I’m sure,” Margaret says, pushing herself off the ground and offering a hand to hoist BJ up. “No, I’m quite sure I know what he wished for.”

“Peace on earth?” BJ says, drawing Margaret in close for a hug once they’re both upright.

“And look,” she gestures across the silent camp. “We got it. Just for him.”

**Author's Note:**

> most of the names are totally random, except for Lieutenant Reid who I named after Elliot from Scrubs just because. The title is from the George Harrison song give me love (give me peace on earth) which naturally always makes me think of hawk the hopeless romantic and peace-monger. lastly, of course, Lupe’s is a real restaurant down on 6th avenue, with the best refried beans in the city.
> 
> i do my mashposting @crickelwood on tumblr if you want to say hi!


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